BLINDSIDED: Angel's nightmare
by evan como
Summary: Companion piece--Angel's in bed and his mind is too active.


Disclaimer: the author does not claim ownership to the characters or plot development mentioned from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or "Angel". These properties expressly belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Greenwolf Corporation, 20th Century Fox Television, WB Network, etc. Any other characters contained in the original story are the author's. 

Historical Note: There are aspects of this piece that are spoiley for the rest of the season and do not fit within the time constrictions of Rm w/a Vu. 

Author's Note: At some point when I really learn how to write, I'm coming back to this story. Oh! I am too ambitious at times (echoes of "Aurora"). I don't promise this is going to make much sense, but I hope it's enjoyable on some level. Many thanks to Wiseblood for the vocabulary word and always to E for the major inspiration. e.c. 30 aug 2000   
  


BLINDSIDED--ANGEL'S NIGHTMARE   
by Evan Como

  


Soft blonde hair tumbled into Angel's eyes. His fingers explored its silken texture; his mouth consumed its scent. 

The owner of said mane giggled into his ear. "I think you're enjoying yourself." 

"You're distracting me," he whispered. It wasn't a complaint, per se; he just wanted her to know that. She giggled again, so unlike her typical response. Perhaps he was distracting her, too. 

She rolled to his side, sliding her knee along his thigh before curving her calf against his. The pulse of her major artery found his perfect nerve and he shuddered. Enjoying her heat, her flowing life amplified through his conductive derma. 

She traced his ragged teeth with an index finger, kissed the disfigured apple of his cheek, slid her toes along the inside of his shin and tangled her leg around his. "You're sure. Not even a kiss?" she asked, nosing the corner of his mouth. 

He reached above-head for the spokes of his headboard, distancing his face from her lips. "We've already done too much." His tawny eyes met her fearless consideration. "It has to be pure. If I do it right, this time--" 

His body trembled uncontrollably, racked with memories of those past mistakes. 

She lifted herself upon him and her weight became his weight. "Then do it already," she taunted through her fingers wedged between their lips. 

He could taste her words, the humidity on her breath. A slightly minty flavor tinged her saliva. Instinctively, the tip of his tongue searched outwards and he tasted the salt on her fingertips, then the salt on her neckline as she slipped the pulsing vein within his reach with another whisper of "do it. Now." 

His lips meandered below her jaw until they situated perfectly. Her arms slid along his; their hands entwined with and against the wrought iron spindles; her torso lengthened while she perspired a little more heavily. 

A delicate squeak escaped her throat at the first puncture. 

Before everything went very wrong, very quickly. 

He could taste her scream splashing against the back of his throat, spilling from the twin piercings. The cry complete, she inhaled raggedly, the breath captured within her inuring body. 

He hated when they held that breath. 

Circling an arm around her slender waist, he squeezed roughly, forcing the air from her lungs and over his hair. Another cry, softer, followed that release. Eventually it was replaced by an even softer sound, a moan--deep and sensual, that soothed her body into a more relaxed state. 

She was in motion now, grinding against his feasting maw, clutching his broad shoulders, bearing her boyish pelvis onto to his. His long arms spread the width of the mattress while she pressed herself more securely against his bite. Sated, he withdrew from her throat and her low guttural humming became a song of protest. 

He could feel his instinct repel her presence; feel his soul reject his reasoning; feel his body respond. With his being properly nourished, he grew stronger and his senses rebalanced. That was no poor substitution, this meal. 

But she was more than a meal. So much more than just a meal and the blonde hair against his face reminded him that. Her lips--soft, delicate pillows--prompted his to respond in kind and, before he realized, he lapped at her mouth. 

The demonic persona degraded. Angel struggled to liberate himself, finding his efforts self-defeating. "I-- I can't. I can't do this to you," he mourned. 

Her body temperature lowered five degrees and she jittered. Meeting his eyes contentiously, she drew his hand to her face and play-bit his palm. "You can't or you won't?" she taunted with raspy voice. Woozy, her flailing slowed. 

Where the left side of her blouse was stained, the incisions oozed nectarously. Through the dampened cloth of her blouse, Angel detected the soft swell of her breast--her womanhood, the gender of her humanity. 

And he could not bring himself to divest her of either. 

The twin lines streamed, rivulets of crimson adorning her throat. He smoothed the hair from her euphoric face, streaking those blond locks persimmon. Angel palpated her wounds, tried to dam them closed; but the ribbons spooled past his fingertips, curled over his knuckles, crumpled inside his fist. 

Ribbons of brightest scarlet drizzled down his wrist to disappear beyond his turnback cuff. Angel watched, morbidly fascinated, while her tongue followed the wayward strands; clenched his eyes when her teeth rooted deeply into his forearm. 

He screamed--a long, mournful wail--with her fingers slipping over his tongue. He burned internally, intensely, as his unlife was voraciously siphoned from his veins. Succumbing to the ritual in human form, weakened and ashamed, Angel's soul intensified his anguish and he was eventually summoned to rest. 

His silent body awoke to his equally silent surroundings. She lay there nearby, separate yet joined. Still emasculated, Angel was barely able to lift his hand to her arm. Her warm arm. The soft scent of her. The warmth of the living, the scent of life. 

The life within her that had once belonged to somebody else. 

"You were supposed to wait for me," he spoke. His words rueful and nearly inaudible, he knew her preternatural hearing would catch their accusation. 

She turned her head lazily, looked at him cruelly with those blue eyes. "You were supposed to have been here already," she seethed. Sitting up with unnatural haste, she slapped his hand clear. "You lied to me about this." 

Angel tried to recall everything he had said to her, every argument against her participation and shook his head in confusion. "Lied about which part?" 

"That it wasn't going to be fun," she related, twisting the blonde hair off her neck before gravity brought it bouncing to rest at her shoulders. 

A snake of red slithered back into the recesses of Angel's imagination. 

Neda studied her lover's back, the sensual curve of his pale flesh exquisitely draped over trembling muscles, a design on the one shoulder farthest from her touch. She inched under the sheets closer to his unclothed body, pitching up on one elbow to glance over the embellishment. 

At that beautiful human face. 

"Don't." 

The command pierced the early morning quiet of Angel's apartment when she reached out. He scooted to the edge of the bed before rolling onto his back, his smooth chest contradictory beneath the hardened look on his face. 

"You are still having those nightmares." 

Perturbed by her inspection, his eyes bore into hers defiantly. "You were supposed to be out before dawn," he intoned. 

She touched him anyway to playfully scratch at his throat. "You wouldn't tell that to one of your humans, would you?" Relishing the look her callous remark invoked, Neda scratched a little harder and nicked his clavicle. "Do you lie to yourself when you make love to me? That I'm her? Although I still can't figure out which one I'm faking for you. The brunette or the blonde?" 

"I've never *made love* to you," Angel seethed. Distracted, he misjudged her touch and cut himself when he pushed to sit up against the iron header. "Get out of my bed. Now." 

Acutely, she studied the way he took a little gasp every so often. Counting the pattern she was able to place her fingers against his lips the exact second he exhaled, marveling at the soft cool of his pretend breath. Neda had never met another vampire who could fake being human so well, nor another she desired as fiercely. 

"Oh, you don't want me out of your bed. Angel. Without further 'therapy', at least not right now." She convincingly smoothed the sumptuous sheet against his inflexible body to justify her argument without attempting to downplay the lecherous nature of her comment. A quick swipe across his forearm rendered a sanguine trio. 

She licked her lips. 

"I'm not your human and you're not mine," Angel spat, shuddering demonic in response to her insatiable clinch. 

"And we don't make love," Neda lied into his beastly arms. 

The feat of collision was spontaneous as the one's fury thundered against the other's. Theirs was a profane exercise in motion and sound, an explosion of tabbing and slotting brutality. As the once-delicate, once-human vessels tested the boundaries of exertion, two savage voices in a threnody of instinct resonated throughout Angel's sub-mortal lair. 

Urge. 

Passion was too pretty a word, too human. 

Already bereft of life and without conscious thought involved, they reveled in cold-blooded vulgarity. A snarl opposed vicious marauding; a slashing grip abetted malevolent plunder. In macabre celebration, two vampires rancorously mocked mankind's most treasured rite. 

Angel, possessed by characteristic hostility, bullied the body against him but Neda responded in kind. Theirs was the mindless ferocity of wearing down and tearing aside; the exploration of domination that pitted equal against equal. 

Against. 

His head rolled about his shoulders before Angel lunged forward again. As his muscles flexed he noted their negative touch beneath his flesh. His own movements against his own skin were familiar ones; what his body had been created--no, trained--to do so well. Not a machine, never a machine. That would imply that each experience was the same--every partner alike--but that was never, simply never, the case. 

He just wished he could remember why he knew that. 

Neda--beneath him one moment, aloft him the next, at flank, circumscribing him. A mental fog one century prior didn't prevent Angel from recalling her touch. In fact, if he had tried to imagine her just few years earlier, he would have remembered something random about her--the way her fangs scraped his when their mouths clashed; or the cool perspiration patched along her obliques; or her nails--those horrid nails always digging into him--shredding him asunder. 

One stint in hell, and he lost them all. Not just Neda; but all of them. Not one memory of a single last one of the many that had been connected to his person in some intimate manner. His body had no problem remembering all of the activity, however, and was doing a damn fine job of executing the routine. 

He imagined himself as Cordelia's date book--appointments without any details. 

Their names were as vague as their faces, except in the case of every vile experience--those were indelibly ingrained. These recent trysts with Neda he would carry forever. The past ones? Gone. Because, even though they had probably been no less pleasant in circumstance, they had provided a distraction. And, a century ago, distraction was a blissful thing. 

In this new existence, it was against the rules to harbor bliss. Outrage, however, was permitted and Neda had no complaints about reaping its benefits. 

Angel watched the furrows form down the length of his forearm. Detached from the experience, it took a moment for the pain of the gesture to sink in. By that time, there were others splayed across his thigh. 

"Stop," was Angel's simple request, formed by human lips while the corners of his earnest brown eyes constricted in pain. He pinned Neda's wrists at her sides. Watching her writhe in ecstasy, he found himself craving the delicious agony of her experience. 

Envious, Angel's shin followed the curve of his opposite calf. The smooth of his inner thighs skimmed one another as he leisurely arched forward, his aroused extension incomplete until his chin found the hollow of one knee and his smooth heel stilled, rounded beneath the cleft of his buttock. 

Gooseflesh speckled Angel's spine. He could hear himself breathing--those familiar sounds from his throat; his throat's reflexive roil when he swallowed. Rolling onto his side, the elongation of his sinewy limbs prompted adroit fingering of the filigree surrounding his masculinity. That feel. His feel. 

His hands. His flesh. 

Realizing she'd lost her consort, Neda straightened. Shedding her own demonic countenance to study him, those lucid brown eyes met hers for the first time in their carnal acquaintance. 

"Angel?" she asked in request of an explanation. 

Spilling onto hands and knees, Angel approached her, leaned into and scooped his arm beneath her waist to rest her--gently--between the pillows. His lithe frame spooned against hers and he adjusted incrementally until they were lying 'just so'. The feel of him was almost undetectable; they were that precisely joined. 

"Oh." 

"This way? Can you?" he breathed into her ear with splintery words. He ached to be civil. 

When her hand met his cheek in reply, Angel sighed--such a tiny voice it was almost inaudible--and his body shifted imperceptibly. Neda concentrated on his arm sliding across her abdomen, his nose ardently nuzzling the cradle of her neck. 

When he took her hand and pressed it against his lips before washing his face with her palm, she pulled away. Intrigued, but unsure. 

"Enjoy me?" he whimpered, enslaved by a soul that yearned to be... 

Gentle. 

Her tentative fingers sought the outline of his lower lip, the swell of his chest and he gathered her hand within his, directing her touch. He had long ago mapped this body; knew the needs of this body--every muscle, every crevice, bulge. Each imperfection and perfection. Their plaited fingers explored those regions, those-- 

"..._boban_. I have never--" The slender fingers walked across his shoulders, an introduction to heather-scented hands that feebly kneaded his maturing biceps. She leaned against his back, sliding her hands into place and he stiffened as she controlled his virginal shaft--upping, downing, directing. "_Luran,_" she called him, tenderly setting precedent, expertly diverting his fear... 

Neda pulled away, confused. The back of her hand sanded the sensuous pink of Angel's mouth until he slipped her hand into his hairline. Closing her eyes when his lips met her temple, she concentrated on the puckery line he fashioned to her neck. 

"Never. As human!" Neda gasped. Unexpectedly modest, she found it most difficult to confess the moral activities of an actual life. 

Thrusting his hands through her thick black locks, Angel met Neda's lips to draw out that taken breath before returning it to her, coaxing her lungs aware. Her foreign mouth against his own resurrected heady, intimate sensations as did the cool, dewy tongue that met his when Angel surmounted her body. Enormously satisfying-- 

...she sighed, soft against his cheek as he unfettered the stays from her bosom. An ethereal gasp accompanied her beneficent welcome, her clement embrace. Her fingertips followed the frame of his face, flickered the tips of his lashes. Yielding to the approach of his practiced hand, her legs parted willingly. "God," she spoke with libertine breath, "God!" she cried, enraptured. 

Prayers--those prayers--murmured in solemn reverence against the nape of his neck; hushed gratitude against his hallowed back. "God. _Àlainn, naomh ciadh,_" they chanted. 

"Shhhhhhh." Whispered kindnesses, adoration of his comforting body. "God. _Àlainn._ Oh, GOD!" Benedictions over his downy flesh, approving psalms. And, for his gracious intercession, approving palms--some satiny or hardened with calluses--groped for his beatific blessings. Passionate voices were raised in exaltation... 

Lies. 

"Angel!" 

He met her gaze then, slowly, sensitively, kissed the distance to Neda's lips. Exploring her mouth, her flavor-- 

The consummation of flesh, his flesh, his moist pliable skin as they perspired in kind, in motion beneath him, above him, behind. Each one different--floral, sweetly herbal, or pungent, sharp, delicate. The saltiness of deepest ocean brine. He tasted them all, delivering them to oblivion. "GOD! _Fear beannaithe!_ Oh, God! GOD! _Íonúin_." 

"...my body given..." 

Sin. 

Neda lifted his face above hers and stared into those eyes. Those deep expressive eyes. Soft, warm-- 

"God." Oh, such awe for the pleasuring savant. "God! Never in my life-- _Aingeal_!" He, their emancipator from wanton desire, unbridled lust. Of them for them; their arduous emissary. "Beautiful pleasuring creature. _Buachallín luachmhar_. God. GOD! Oh, dear God." For the mite of a favor, his all... 

Illusion. 

Neda strummed her fingers over his warming flesh. She'd never known him to be so... Human. She imagined a nip at his silent throat would provide a sumptuous feast. "Angel," she whispered to the absent being against her, moving with her--within her, his rolling hips divulging his prowess. She felt. 

Different. 

His response was so... Human. His anatomical beauty held her enthralled as he burrowed more deeply, grazed the lines of her lips with his. His hands--those glorious non-stop hands--plied a body that was not hers; at least, not the body that had delighted for centuries in deathly experience. 

His human body moved against a human body Neda had never known and she began to simmer in that recognition. These female parts obeyed his instructions; instinctually, they sought to guide him. She tensed. Mortis response rigorously struggled to oblige him, remain surrounded by and in concert with him. 

With him... 

A tiny hand against his fevered brow unknotted his unkempt hair. 

"I don't deserve--" He lamented, his arms outstretched--so distanced from her. The little fingers playfully pinched his lips before massaging the curves of his face, tickling the fringe of his hairline, his ears; circling the maze of his lobes to settle him softly. To calm him. To-- 

Heal him. 

Angel shreiked. The pretend of his breath expunged from his lungs and he gasped once, twice before yelping again. He fought for sight, barely focusing through the swell in his eyes as-- 

Vaporous. The sights and the sounds and the tastes, and the scents and the-- 

He jerked Neda's hand and was slashed by the other, more deeply, fiercer across the soft of his abdomen. "Neda," he gasped. "Please", he begged as every spectral activity dissolved from his mind. 

His body became merely an organ with a directive all its own. Relying on that experienced, repetitive motion, it involuntarily continued its objective. The urge never diminished. 

Urge. Distress. Urge. Regret. Urge. Urge. 

URGE! 

Until the urgency of pattern gave way to grief. 

Angel reclined on his side and vacantly glared at the carve of his armoire, his hands clutched beneath his pillow while he listened to Neda dress. She was silent as their kind was silent but, yes, he still heard. They had been more than together, whatever they'd done. And every memory of it had been deleted before completion. 

Angel shivered. 

Before she rose, Neda's tepid body against his own reminded him he had forgotten to turn up the furnace. He tried not to think about how chill the apartment would be when he finally got up. His shower would have to be hotter, for longer in order to warm himself. After a thorough cleansing he would wear a turtleneck, perhaps, to assist the illusion. Residing in a basement apartment was a good idea, he reminded himself even though the upstairs offices would always be warmer. 

Doyle and Cordelia would be warmer... But he doubted he would find the strength to join them today. 

His teeth chattering, Angel curled himself more fetal and pulled the blanket first around his neck, then finally over his head. He could hear her descent, her slinking down into the sewer. 

His teeth hurt. His skin hurt. His dormant heart. Hurt. 

When he crumpled the reminder Cordelia had placed beneath his pillow, the paper sliced across Angel's palm. His muscles eventually tamed beneath his flesh, his feel; his unnecessary breath stalled, his silence; while his internal fluid dried crusty upon his renovating flesh; Their scent. 

Alone, all alone, Angel accepted exhaustion and longed for a dark, dreamless sleep. 

-0-

[evancomo@netscape.net][1]

[Angel's Journal][2]

   [1]: mailto: evancomo@netscape.net
   [2]: http://members.xoom.com/angeljournal/index.htm



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